Palm oil, the devil you (need to) know

PSA: Some ingredients in our favourite personal care and cleaning products may not be harmful to us but surely are for our planet.

It's more important than ever to be conscious of what we are consuming. 

Palm oil might sound innocuous it comes at a great cost to our environment causing catastrophic damage for local wildlife, flora, fauna and waterways.

In Indonesia rising demand for palm oil has led to the clearing of tropical forests in their National Parks, not just farming land and other sensitive areas.

According to a 2007 report published by United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)at the rate of deforestation at that time, an estimated 98 % of Indonesian forest would be destroyed by 2022 due to legal and illegal logging, forest fires and the development of palm oil plantations.

Now it is not only Indonesia and Malaysia but Africa that is experiencing degradation.

Palm oil originated in Africa and has been produced in smaller sustainable quantities but due to demand and economic pressure are now looking at clearing other crops and forest to plant palm oil.

Becoming environmentally aware of the damage that this cheap commodity causes is something we all should be considering.

Check ingredients lists not only in your personal and household products but your ice cream, cakes, biscuits and other food items and become a warrior against this creeping environmental disaster.

Companies are using many names to disguise palm oil in their produce. Here's a few to look out for

• Vegetable oil
• Alkyl poly glucoside
• Gylceryloleate
• Glyceryl distearate
• Palm fruit oil
• Palm olein
• PEG-100 stearate
• Peptide complex and many more

enviroCare stopped using palm oil in all of our products in 2011.

Coconut is the base for most of our product ranges. We source plantation based coconut where possible, so we are not encouraging land clearing.

Reading ingredients and commit to the cause by leaving the palm oil product on the shelf.

Alert the supermarkets and manufacturers that our community is serious about our environment and the fragility of it.

Get familiar by the many names that palm oil hides behind so that you're able to make informed decisions and help save our planet from the land clearing, animal habitat destruction, flora and fauna decimation and contamination and destruction of waterways caused by the toxic by-products of the process of the palm oil and it's derivatives.